


Scars and Similarities

by CantStopImagining



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-16
Updated: 2016-08-16
Packaged: 2018-08-09 05:20:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7788238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CantStopImagining/pseuds/CantStopImagining
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’m not good at being serious,” Holtzmann says, bobbing her leg up and down, “I’m not good at saying the right thing. But I’ll tell you everything about myself, even the most embarrassing stuff, if that will make you feel better.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scars and Similarities

**Author's Note:**

> Okaaay I started this because I read a post on tumblr (which I can't seem to find now I am so sorry - I absolutely want to give credit to the original poster, if anyone knows the post I am talking about) about Holtz having scars from her work, and I didn't expect this to go quite down this route but here we are. I think there are a few... risky head canons in this piece, and I'm nervous to post it, but I also feel like I needed to get it out of me, so I'm hoping this will make a good read for somebody, at the very least. It has sat in my document drafts for too long.
> 
> Thank you so much for all the comments I've received on my other recent Ghostbusters works - it's kept me writing!

Holtzmann’s skin underneath her jumpsuit is puckered and scarred, a constellation of white and pink lines barely visible on her milky pale skin, and Erin makes it her mission to kiss every single one of them. She’s not under any illusions that what Holtzmann does is safe - hell, she’s put out enough fires herself, has heard her curse quietly when one of her inventions sparks and sends debris flying into her face and hair. She’s singed her eyebrows at least twice in the time Erin’s known her - but she’s still startled the first time she sees her naked. There’s so many of them.

“Do they hurt?” Erin whispers, tracing her fingers over a map of intricate lines on her stomach. She’s been waiting patiently, not wanting to ask about them right away, but now that she’s quietly confident that what they’re doing isn’t just a one time thing (or a few times thing), she pays them special attention, kissing along Holtzmann’s ribs, one mark at a time.

“Nah,” Holtzmann mumbles, and Erin continues her exploration.

A red crescent moon sits in the hollow of Holtzmann’s collarbone, surrounded by short lines like roots of a plant. Erin decides this place is her favourite. It’s especially tender and she likes the sound Holtz makes when she kisses it - after checking that it doesn’t hurt. She has a burn on the back of her neck that hasn’t fully healed, more on her arms that have.

Erin has her own scars, worn lines that hide under Holtzmann’s grip as she pins her wrists to the bed. She’s always felt so self-conscious about them, even as old and faded as they are now, but if Holtzmann notices them (which she surely has - she’s so attentive and observant in the way she watches Erin, knows the ins and outs of every part of her body as if it were one of her own creations), she doesn’t say anything, doesn’t pass any kind of judgement. She’s gentle over every inch of Erin’s body as though it were precious, her scars included. Erin had burnt herself once as a teen, using a zippo lighter that she’d found and kept with the intentions of taking up smoking (the taste and the coughing was too much and she gave up after trying twice), the flame licking a ragged semi circle along her right arm, which her fingers still found their way to every now and then, despite the mark mostly fading into nothingness. Holtz’s fingers, worn and calloused, and yet somehow still gentle (despite the fact she sheepishly tells Erin that she’s got severe nerve damage in half of them), dance across the flesh and make it feel like something not to be ashamed of anymore.

Erin's alarm goes off at 8:30am on a Sunday, in the middle of lazy morning sex, and she somehow doesn’t even notice it, drowns it out, until her head is fuzzy and she’s seeing stars dance before her eyes, and then, finally, when Holtz is back lying beside her, panting, curled into her side, she realises the noise has been going on for at least ten minutes.

“Someone really wants to get hold of you,” Holtz whispers huskily into her hair.

Erin waits until she’s mustered up enough energy to turn it off and get out of the bed, grabbing Holtz’s t-shirt from the floor and pulling it on, before leaving the room. When she returns, she’s carrying a plate of peach slices and a glass of water. She devours the fruit, Holtzmann watching her unashamedly with piqued interest, and then pops a tablet from its packet, and swallows it with the water.

“Vitamins?”

Tucking the packet back into her bedside drawer, Erin nods. She knows she shouldn’t lie, but there’s a part of her that knows what happens when people find out the truth. It’s been the same way her whole life, and she’s never had anybody that she’s so desperate not to lose before.

Holtzmann jumps off the bed and rummages through the pocket of her discarded overalls, fumbling with the lid of a small orange bottle, and pouring out two pills. She swallows them dry. She turns to see Erin gazing at her, and tosses the bottle towards her, Erin just narrowly catching it.

“Ritalin?” Erin reads aloud. She hopes she doesn’t look as shocked as she feels.

“Yep.”

“I… had no idea…” Erin admits, staring at the bottle, and suddenly feeling guilty for lying.

“I’m full of surprises,” Holtzmann tells her. She adds on her signature wink, the one that used to make Erin weak at the knees, even before she recognised the reaction. It still does.

Holtz sits down on the edge of the bed like she hasn’t said anything, her large silver duffle bag open on her lap, which she pulls clothes out of. It’s become an unaddressed fact that she always packs a spare set of clothes now. Erin crawls down the bed, and sits next to her, nervously passing the bottle of Ritalin from hand to hand. Holtzmann stops poking around, and takes the bottle from her, clasping her fingers around Erin’s to stop her fidgeting.

“It's no biggie, I’ve taken them since I was a kid,” she tells Erin, though the unusually serious expression on her face and the way her eyes keep flickering away from Erin’s says otherwise.

Looking down at their hands, and the way her fingers are still strumming even against the loose pressure of Holtzmann’s, Erin gulps hard. She hasn’t talked about this in so long, not even to Abby. It’s embarrassing, really, at her age. It’s always been faintly embarrassing, but especially now. Especially now that she has things keeping her afloat where she didn’t before.

“I take anti-depressants,” Erin says softly, feeling her cheeks go red, “for anxiety, mostly, but…”

Holtzmann looks at her closely, but her expression doesn’t change. She lifts their joined hands to her face and gently kisses Erin’s palm. Still meeting her eyes, she brushes Erin’s hair out of her face, letting her fingers move down to cup her cheek. They kiss, and Erin tries to block out the excruciatingly loud sound of her heart pounding in her chest, hoping it isn’t as loud to Holtzmann. She shouldn’t feel like this. It’s just been so long since she let anyone in, let anyone know her deepest, darkest secrets, and whilst Holtzmann knows _a lot_ already, she’s been wary of driving her away. A huge part of her still can’t believe someone like Jillian Holtzmann would want to be with someone like her.

“I’m sorry,” Erin murmurs as they pull apart, “for trying to hide it from you.”

“You don’t have to be sorry.”

Moving her fingers lightly down Erin’s arm, Holtzmann reaches her wrist and runs her thumb over the tender skin there, and Erin can’t help but flinch, staring down at their hands. She glances up at Holtzmann’s face, her furrowed brow, before the blonde pulls away. She slides off the bed and tugs the assortment of clothes on, twisting her hair into it’s usual bun without even bothering to brush it. She pokes pins into it without looking. Erin watches her, her hands clenching and unclenching nervously in her lap, unsure what to do. 

"You want coffee?” Holtz asks her, plucking her yellow-lensed goggles from the floor and fixing them onto the top of her head, “I could really go for a stack o’ pancakes, but I wouldn’t want to mess up your perfect little kitchen. I guess I could go to Dunkers and pick us up something.”

Erin stares at her, her mouth slightly open, unable to put together a response. Why is she being so normal after everything she's just found out?

Holtzmann squints at her, a goofy expression on her face, “okay, no, I know you. You’re a bagel gal. That’s cool too. Patty and I go to this deli on—“

“Why are you being so normal?” Erin finally says, hating the way her voice comes out strained.

Gaping at her for a second before recovering, Holtzmann tilts her head to one side, “normal? As opposed to…?”

“I just told you something that’s a huge secret. And you told me about… yours. And you’re talking about breakfast foods like nothing happened.”

She watches Holtzmann’s eyes as they soften, her expression turning from her usual manic smirk to something gentler. She sits down beside Erin, leaning back on her elbows.

“I didn’t know it was such a big deal. You already said that when you were a kid you went to therapy; I’m not exactly shocked,” Holtz watches her, and clearly thinks she’s said the wrong thing because she adds: “it doesn’t change anything about the way I feel about you.”

Erin doesn’t know what to say to that, can’t quite work out how to feel. As a child, her entire existence seemed to revolve around her seeing her neighbour’s ghost, her being sent to therapy. Nobody wanted to be friends with her because she was a freak. She’d kept it as quiet as she could through college, the only guy she ever took back to her dorm freaking out when he saw the package lying on her nightstand, and leaving. Abby had always known, of course, but Abby was different. She’d always been different. 

Erin had got used to keeping it a secret. She’d worn thick blazers and blouses with firmly buttoned down sleeves for as long as she could remember. Even her therapist’s details were hidden in her phone as something else. People didn’t respect her as it was, they didn’t need to know the full extent of her crazy.

“I’m not good at being serious,” Holtzmann says, bobbing her leg up and down, “I’m not good at saying the right thing. But I’ll tell you everything about myself, even the most embarrassing stuff, if that will make you feel better.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Erin says, frowning.

“I will though, if it helps? I can start at the beginning, when my parents tried to give me up because I was too much—“

“Holtz—“ Erin tries, “come on, I don’t need to—“

“—handle, and then I lived with my Grams for like eighteen months only then she died and—“

“Jillian.” Erin finally says, the word foreign to her, and that gets Holtzmann’s attention, draws her out of the weird trance she seems to have gone into. 

She stops mid sentence, her mouth staying open for a long moment before she closes it again. She scrunches up her face and for a second Erin thinks she’s going to cry, and she definitely isn’t equipped for that. The only time she’s ever seen her cry was that night on the roof, gazing out at the messages written for them in lights, and she’d decided it wasn’t something they ought to talk about. It’s played on her mind ever since.

“Coffee,” Holtz murmurs, getting to her feet, and Erin follows her, because she’s never seen her like this and she’s reckless at the best of times, but she really doesn’t need Holtzmann to accidentally pour a kettle of hot water over herself, or something worse.

Her words sink in slowly as she watches Holtz carefully prepare the coffee, mechanically, like she’s building a machine. All this time Erin has anticipated this thing between them - whatever it is - ending, Holtzmann realising she can have literally any woman she wants, and that Erin isn’t good enough for her. Holtzmann has an abundance of confidence, has always seemed so secure in herself, so unbothered by what other people think of her. Only, now, Erin isn’t so sure. Maybe they have more in common than she thought. Maybe that’s what’s drawn them together.

“Do you want me to go?” Holtz finally says, and the kettle has been boiled for a good few minutes, but sits untouched, right next to their mugs. Erin suddenly feels this horrible acidic feeling in her stomach, her throat tight.

“Why would I want that?” she says, her words coming out strained.

“Girls usually want me to. The few I’ve seen, I mean. They don’t usually let me stay. Just, you’ve never asked me to go, and obviously we work together, so I’ve stayed.”

Erin swallows back the lump that’s grown in the back of her throat, “do you want to stay?” _Am I just another girl to you,_ she wants to say, but doesn’t.

“Of course I do,” Holtzmann says, oddly quietly, “I’ve wanted to be here since we first met.”

Erin’s beginning to think all that bravado that seems to ooze from Holtzmann is nothing more than an act. She’d spent the first weeks - okay, months - of being in her company convinced that she flirted with absolutely everybody. It was a miracle they’d made it this far, to be honest. It hadn’t even really occurred to her that she might actually like her in the same way that Erin was pretty sure she was beginning to ‘like’ Holtzmann. Even once they’d started sleeping together, she’d assumed it was casual. It isn’t like Holtz has really indicated otherwise.

Or maybe she has, and Erin is just bad at getting the hint.

“I’m really not good at reading situations,” Holtzmann pauses, blows her hair out of her face with a heavy breath, “the Ritalin sort of helps with that. Kind of. Did I mention that before Abby I had, like, no friends?”

Ah, yes, Abby, patron saint of taking in strays.

Erin nods, “I think we are more similar than we give ourselves credit.”

“I spent some time trying to work out if you and I were compatible… you know, basic equations, data running… probably more your area of expertise than mine, but I wanted to try and figure it out before leaping in and messing things up - because we both know I am epically good at that. I like explosions, but I didn’t want this to blow up in my face because it’s… important,” Holtzmann rambles, tapping her fingers idly on the edge of the counter. She’s still not looking at Erin, “I think I… calculated wrong. Because this isn’t how I wanted it to play out. The results implied that it would work.”

“You ran data analysis on me? Holtz, you flirted with me the first time we met.”

Holtzmann glances at her over her shoulder, a small grin on her face, her cheeks faintly pink, “I did, didn’t I? That was… I didn’t think you were going to become a permanent fixture.”

There’s something about the way she says ‘permanent’ that makes something flutter in Erin’s stomach, and she thinks Holtz must have noticed, because she’s turned fully now, and she looks at her with that same unsure expression that Erin only discovered tonight, but has already become completely enamoured by. She tugs Holtzmann towards her, laces their fingers together, if for no other reason than to stop Holtz’s incessant tapping.

"I want to be a permanent fixture,” Erin says, feeling brave. She’s terrible at flirting, but this one time, it works, and Holtz gazes at her like she’s a work of art, before she kisses her.

-

“God, what is that?” Abby’s fingers are pushing aside the collar of Erin’s shirt before she even has the opportunity to stop her. She feels her heart pounding in her chest, that familiar feeling of being caught drawn back into the forefront of her mind from years and years ago. She’d never been good at making up excuses. Her parents had always known.

“I…” Erin swallows, cranes her neck to try and get a look at what Abby is poking at.

“Is that a _hickey?!_ ” Abby finally says, letting go of her.

She glances across the room at Holtzmann, who is noisily finishing up a milkshake. She grins, the straw still between her lips, and winks, mouthing the word ‘nice’. _Insufferable._ Rolling her eyes, Erin tugs her blouse back into place, wondering what new hues of scarlet her face has reached this time.

“Patty, you owe me 10 bucks,” Abby yells, and Patty groans from her own work station, before coughing up the cash.

Erin swivels on her chair to look between the two of them.

“Oh come on, you don’t think we didn’t figure it out?” Patty grins at her, unable to contain her excitement.

Abby pulls her tightly into a one armed hug, Patty practically lifting Holtzmann out of her seat, and Erin thinks _well, at least they approve._

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't really want to say this explicitly in the work, but my head canon for Holtzmann is that she is somewhere on the autistic spectrum (a lot of her character seems to support this theory). ADHD is often something people with autism are also diagnosed with, and is something that can actually be more specifically treated, which I guess is why I went with that in this. I really don't want to offend anybody, so I'm hoping I've been as careful as possible with including it in this work, but I absolutely accept any constructive criticism because it isn't something I'm really qualified to diagnose anybody with. For that reason alone, I've been umming and ahhing over posting this. I just hope I've done the head canon justice. Thank you for reading.


End file.
